DUBLIN, Ireland (AFP) -- Sex abuse victim groups yesterday called for Ireland's Cardinal Sean Brady to resign after he confirmed he was at meetings where two alleged victims of a notorious paedophile priest signed an oath of secrecy.

A Catholic Church statement said the cardinal, who was then a priest and part-time secretary to the late Bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan, had attended the 1975 meetings at the direction of the bishop.

The church was investigating sex abuse complaints against Father Brendan Smyth, whose activities led to the fall of prime minister Albert Reynolds' coalition government in 1994.

Smyth, who is believed to have abused hundreds of children over a 40-year period, was finally jailed in the 1990s and died in prison.

The church statement said Brady attended two meetings with the alleged victims and "at those meetings the complainants signed undertakings, on oath, to respect the confidentiality of the information-gathering process.

"As instructed, and as a matter of urgency, Father Brady passed both reports to Bishop McKiernan for his immediate action," the statement adds.

Maeve Lewis, executive director of the One in Four victims' group, said the cardinal must resign.

"If Brendan Smyth had been convicted in the 1970s I would imagine that hundreds of children would have been saved from sexual abuse.

"Cardinal Brady is the leader of the Irish church. He has to lead the response to the various sex abuse scandals that have broken and this revelation I think removes any credibility Cardinal Brady has and he must resign," she told RTE state radio.

Amnesty International Ireland executive director Colm O'Gorman, himself a clerical abuse victim, said Brady must have realised that child sex abuse was a serious crime and should have been reported to the police.

"What is obscene... is that these victims of rape and abuse by Brendan Smyth were required to sign oaths of secrecy.

"I think his position is not just untenable, I think it is impossible," O'Gorman said.

Mainly Catholic Ireland has been rocked by three judicial reports ordered by the government in the last five years revealing ill-treatment, abuse and cruelty by clerics and a cover-up of their activities by church authorities.

Following a Vatican summit last month with all of the Irish bishops, Pope Benedict XVI plans to issue a pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics about the scandal.

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